John McLaughlin exhibit at LACMA
Four and a half months before leaving LA, every experience becomes more precious, tinged with a bit of sadness: soon this will come to an end.
Don't get me wrong, there are many things I am looking forward to when returning home to Israel, but the LA art world that open its gates before me, this world I will sorely miss. And not just the large, breathtaking exhibits we planned to go to (Minor White, Picasso...) but the ones we encountered by mistake, when waiting for a tour to start, or just passing through the room in order to get to the exhibit we wanted to see. Like last Sunday, John McLaughlin' "Total Abstraction".
We had 15 minutes before the start of the Picasso and Rivera tour, and started peeking at the other exhibits in the building to pass the time. I am not a huge fan of completely abstract work, but something in the coherent simplicity of the room demanded attention. This was one of three rooms showing work by a painter I never heard about John McLaughlin. The plaque on the wall described his Japanese influences and had a quote that caught my eyes:
"Asian paintings made me wonder who I was. Western painters, on the other hand, tried to tell me who they were."
For the first time, I turned around and looked at abstract images differently. All of a sudden the focus of the paintings changed. Instead of looking at the painted lines, I focused on the spaces between them. Listening between the lines to echoes of me.
